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Radiocarbon Dating of Bones at the LARA Laboratory in Bern, Switzerland

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 November 2016

Sönke Szidat ,
Edith Vogel ,
Regula Gubler  and
Sandra Lösch
Sönke Szidat*
Affiliation:
Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry (DCB), University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research (OCCR), University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland
Edith Vogel
Affiliation:
Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry (DCB), University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research (OCCR), University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland
Regula Gubler
Affiliation:
Archaeological Service of the Canton of Bern (ADB), Bern, Switzerland
Sandra Lösch
Affiliation:
Department of Physical Anthropology, Institute of Forensic Medicine (IRM), University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland
*
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected].
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Abstract

The Laboratory for the Analysis of Radiocarbon with AMS (LARA) was established at the University of Bern in 2013. Since then, the quality of sample preparation and radiocarbon measurement procedures have been validated for different materials such as plant remains, macrofossils, bulk sediment, charcoals, and wood. This article presents the optimization of sample pretreatment of bones based on protocols described in the literature. The extraction of collagen was performed with an acid-base-acid treatment, gelatinization, coarse filtration, lyophilization, and graphitization. Dating results were validated as satisfactory for the Holocene by investigation of 36 individual samples previously dated by other 14C laboratories including VIRI/SIRI materials and from well-known archaeological contexts. An additional blank contribution for bone treatment was determined by comparison with the preparation of other sample materials. The cases of two outliers from the Holocene were studied in detail.

Keywords

bonechemical analysispretreatment14C AMS dating
Type
Chemical Pretreatment Approaches
Information
Radiocarbon , Volume 59 , Special Issue 3: Proceedings of the 22nd International Radiocarbon Conference (Part 2 of 2) , June 2017 , pp. 831 - 842
Copyright
© 2016 by the Arizona Board of Regents on behalf of the University of Arizona 

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Footnotes

Selected Papers from the 2015 Radiocarbon Conference, Dakar, Senegal, 16–20 November 2015

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